Beginner’s Meditation Tips #1: Getting to the Cushion

One of the truly awesome, and at times challenging, things about meditation is there really is no instruction other than beginner’s instruction. If you are new to meditation, try to and enjoy your practice without seeking expert status – this is it!

Today’s tips are about getting to the cushion. Often we are exposed to meditation and we bring great enthusiasm to making this practice a part of our lives. However, we quickly find ourselves putting off sitting in favor of watching a little more TV or sleeping in a few minutes longer. The greatest benefits of meditation come not from a single session but rather from sitting every day.

1. Set a reasonable length of time: Consider starting with 5 minutes. Remember our goal is to sit every day, not to be rocketed into enlightenment with that one perfect session. The first few months provide more of a challenge building a new habit than anything else. Make you ability to succeed sustainable. What length of time would it be impossible to say no to? What length of time doesn’t intimidate you at all?
   
2. Link your meditation to something you do everyday. I have a friend who meditates in between showering and shaving. Another friend pulls into the parking lot at work in the morning and sits in her car. I know a guy whose life has been radically changed by meditating on the train ride into the city. Yet another friend links her meditation to waiting for her coffee to brew. The couple who started the Tuesday night meditation group I cherish, sit every evening after dinner together. I have a routine of washing the dishes and then sitting. Examine your life. Where do you see an opportunity to add some quiet time? 
3. Make a checklist. When I challenge myself to make a new habit or to do something like my daily gratitude list, I put a checklist in a visible place. Hard to ignore a box next to a date that is waiting to be clicked off. I like to use the space next to my phone at work on a little posted note. Inconspicuous but impossible for me to miss.
4. Ask yourself why you meditate. A powerful and motivating force for creating this new daily discipline lies in our most intimate motivations. We are attracted to meditation for different reasons; spiritual inquiry, a desire to quiet the mind, a quest for serenity, managing anger or anxiety, or coping with the loss of a loved one. These and other starting points provide for important reminders. Hard to justify watching another episode of Real Housewives when the alternative is working on an important struggle in your life. Why do you meditate? 
5. Join a group. When I first started meditating I was lucky enough to have the support of a weekly group. This guaranteed I had at least one day a week of meditation. Even better, the support of others and the shared experience was a powerful motivator for my own daily sitting.
6. Learn from the resistance to practice. We examine our minds when we do zazen but the opportunity to see our mind at work is available to us at all times. We can learn a lot from honestly inquiring within ourselves what these resistance points are.
7. Just do it. Sometimes it is easier to simply let go of the struggle and just get on the cushion. Meditation is no place for debate. If we have good reasons to practice and a reasonable goal in mind, just sit there!

Good luck! May your practice and your life go well.

365: The Scripture of the Golden Eternity – 64

64

I was smelling flowers in the yard, and when I stood up I took a deep breath and the blood all rushed to my brain and I woke up dead on my back in the grass. I had apparently fainted, or died, for about sixty seconds. My neighbor saw me but he thought I had just suddenly thrown myself on the grass to enjoy the sun. During that timeless moment of unconsciousness I saw the golden eternity. I saw heaven. In it nothing had ever happened, the events of a million years ago were just as phantom and ungraspable as the events of now, or the events of the next ten minutes. It was perfect, the golden solitude, the golden emptiness, Something-Or- Other, something surely humble. There was a rapturous ring of silence abiding perfectly. There was no question of being alive or not being alive, of likes and dislikes, of near or far, no question of giving or gratitude, no question of mercy or judgment, or of suffering or its opposite or anything. It was the womb itself, aloneness, alaya vijnana the universal store, the Great Free Treasure, the Great Victory, infinite completion, the joyful mysterious essence of Arrangement. It seemed like one smiling smile, one adorable adoration, one gracious and adorable charity, everlasting safety, refreshing afternoon, roses, infinite brilliant immaterial gold ash, the Golden Age. The “golden” came from the sun in my eyelids, and the “eternity” from my sudden instant realization as I woke up that I had just been where it all came from and where it was all returning, the everlasting So, and so never coming or going; therefore I call it the golden eternity but you can call it anything you want. As I regained consciousness I felt so sorry I had a body and a mind suddenly realizing I didn’t even have a body and a mind and nothing had ever happened and everything is alright forever and forever and forever, O thank you thank you thank you.

The Scripture of the Golden Eternity
By Jack Kerouac

365: The Scripture of the Golden Eternity

63

The God of the American Plateau Indian was Coyote. He says: “Earth! those beings living on your surface, none of them disappearing, will all be transformed. When I have spoken to them, when they have spoken to me, from that moment on, their words and their bodies which they usually use to move about with, will all change. I will not have heard them.”

The Scripture of the Golden Eternity
By Jack Kerouac

 

365: The Scripture of the Golden Eternity

62

This world has no marks, signs, or evidence of existence, nor the noises in it, like accident of wind or voices or heehawing animals, yet listen closely the eternal hush of silence goes on and on throughout all this, and has been gong on, and will go on and on. This is because the world is nothing but a dream and is just thought of and the everlasting eternity pays no attention to it. At night under the moon, or in a quiet room, hush now, the secret music of the Unborn goes on and on, beyond conception, awake beyond existence. Properly speaking, awake is not really awake because the golden eternity never went to sleep; you can tell by the constant sound of Silence which cuts through this world like a magic diamond through the trick of your not realizing that your mind caused the world.

The Scripture of the Golden Eternity
By Jack Kerouac

365: The Scripture of the Golden Eternity

61

I remember that I’m supposed to be a man and consciousness and I focus my eyes and the print reappears and the words of the poor book are saying, “The world, as God has made it” and there are no words in my pitying heart to express the knowless loveliness of the trance there was before I read those words, I had no such idea that there was a world.

The Scripture of the Golden Eternity
By Jack Kerouac

Video: Zen Buddhism – The Land of the Disappearing Buddha

This is delightful documentary from the 70s.

My Friend Clarence

My friend Clarence died last week after a year of his wife very tenderly taking care of him. Clarence was happy with his life, had his affairs in order and shared that he wasn’t afraid to die. His cousin and six siblings passed before him and he was deeply appreciative of his wife and daughter who looked after him.

Clarence lived in the house his grandfather built over a hundred years ago, had four children and drove trucks for his entire career. He has been to every state in the Union except for Hawaii. Once, he drove a truck all the way home from Chicago after the clutch blew. His favorite part of the job was teaching new truckers how to drive and helping them pass the licensing test. I believe he must have been a kind teacher.

Clarence was very concerned that I really learned something that couldn’t be learned enough. We’re lucky to have people in our lives to love, but it isn’t enough just to love them; you have to show them.

Shortly after his death I spoke with Mary, his wife, and shared how often he expressed his appreciation of her patience through his illness, of how many times he told me the story of their courtship 51 years ago and how much he loved her.  She already knew…

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/thetimes-tribune/obituary.aspx?n=clarence-william-lewis&pid=157228811